PhD thesis Title Page Final _Richard Juma - Victoria University ...

unsustainable costs. The Turkana local economies gradually become
almost totally dependent on continuing international aid during this
period.
However, despite the disruptive nature of various factors on the Turkana
livelihood system, it has been recognised that social institutions as a
foundation of social capital, have traditionally acted as a fundamental
livelihood strategy. For example, territoriality and neighbourhoods were
units of identification in a given geographical space and enabled social
forces such as ethnic groups to establish inter-unit relations in the
utilization of resources. The organizational structure of splitting the family
unit into grazing homesteads and browse homesteads was ecologically
innovative, as it utilized the widely dispersed vegetation inorder to meet
the dietary needs of livestock (Gulliver 1951). Labour organization within
the family was geared towards the sustenance of the pastoral economy.
The head of the household performed a supervisory role of herding,
branding, and watering animals. Women performed the task of milking
and watering young animals, while young girls assisted in fetching water,
cooking, and herding goats and sheep. Young boys herded young stock,
such as calves and lambs. Stock associateship enabled individuals to
widely disperse livestock among affinals inorder to prepare against instant
decimation of livestock by ecological disasters such as epidemics and
drought. It also enabled individuals to establish social bonds and
reciprocal relations between contracting parties. Legality in Turkana
society guided individuals in the utilization of the pastoral resources such
as water, salt licks, and grass. It enabled them to contain deviant
behaviour and to resolve conflict. The same social institutions such as
kinship and rangeland territoriality were the basis of organizing
sustenance in producing activities such as pastoralism. They were also the
basis of identity and legitimization of the Turkana social and economic
quests.
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